He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the departed Phil Kessel.

But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a Looch fight!”

As we prepare to enter 2010 and enjoy our last two years before the Mayans blow up the world (that’s my understanding…?), here’s a few holiday oats from Clarence’s trough…

This hilarious audio clip is from Steve Martin, Paul Simon and Billy Joel…..I’ll let Billy set the table:

ONE GREAT NIGHT IN NEW YORK

“One night around Christmas 20 years ago, I was doing a recording session at A&R Studios in Hell’s Kitchen. We had just finished the session, and my producer and I decided to get some food. It was fairly late at night, and we ran into Paul Simon and Steve Martin at the restaurant. We had a little bit of wine, and then we had a little more wine. Nobody was feeling any pain. We got a brainstorm that we would go back to the studio and record a Christmas record. It must’ve been about midnight at this point. So we go back to the studio, and Paul Simon and I are singing in the background that Christmas carol ‘Silver Bells.’ We’re harmonizing, and Steve Martin starts into this soliloquy ‘What Christmas Means to Me,’ with these hysterical descriptions of the secretary sitting on the copying machine, all these very risqui scenarios. And Paul and I are just trying to keep it together. We did this maybe in one take and we had a Christmas single. Now, it was never given to a record company, but there’s a copy of it floating around somewhere. Stuff like that happens in New York. It’s a small town.”

Again, this link is ‘audio only’….no (known) video of this session exists:

Ben Folds has a great Christmas song, “Bizarre Christmas Incident”, that was part of 2002’s “Maybe This Christmas” compilation (highly recommended). Here’s Ben doing a rare live performance of this future Christmas classic (thanks 2 ColdandComposed) just before Christmas 2005:

And this video deserves to be shown again…

Nine-year-old hockey player Oliver Wahlstrom scored this amazing goal for NESN’s mini-one-on-one back in October. If the Bruins can’t manage to get Ilya Kovalchuk by the trading deadline, they should talk to this kid’s agent – hopefully Scott Boras hasn’t gotten him yet:

Speaking of young sports prodigies, here’s my nephew/godson from 1991 – still honing his golf skills:

ONE GREAT NIGHT IN CALGARY?

And what would the Holidays be without a drunken celebrity karaoke star! Kudos to the Calgary Flames Dion Phaneuf for doing “Piano Man” just like Billy Joel used to do it…..shit-faced.

Click on the picture to see the performance…..this picture probably looks like he did when he left the bar that night: